1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for estimating the response of a system. More particularly, the present invention relates to a processing method which may be used to estimate the acoustic response of an environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a requirement for methods and apparatus for removing echo signals from a signal output by a microphone. Such methods and apparatus have applications in, for example, hands free telephones. Here the echo signal is created by a signal received from another party which is output through a loudspeaker and input to the microphone.
One known echo cancellation apparatus takes a cross-correlation of the signal output by the loudspeaker with the signal output by the microphone, and an autocorrelation of the signal output through the loudspeaker. By using known techniques to solve a system of linear equations created using this cross-correlation and autocorrelation data, a set of filter coefficients can be generated. These coefficients can then be used to filter the signal input to the loudspeaker, and to produce an estimate of the echo signal included in the signal output by the microphone. This estimate is then subtracted from the signal output by the microphone to obtain the signal of interest.
The known echo cancellation apparatus described above is effective in reasonably accurately cancelling echo signals from the signal output from the microphone.
However, the known apparatus is unable to cope with a so-called “double talk” situation where both parties speak simultaneously causing errors in estimating the filter coefficients, such that an estimate of the echo signal is no longer accurately generated. Additionally, the autocorrelation may cause the equations to be ill conditioned, making it difficult to accurately solve the system of equations, and also making solution of the equations a process with high computational complexity.
In order to overcome this problem, some known echo cancellers are capable of detecting double-talk, and simply freezing the filter coefficients. However, it is often the case that filter coefficients are frozen incorrectly, meaning that the echo is not correctly cancelled, and in some cases, even increased.